Commentary
In the 2005 film “Lord of War,” an arms dealer (played by Nicolas Cage) argued that armaments had become one of Russia’s biggest exports since the end of the Cold War. “After that,” he said, “comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.”
Anyone who has driven a Russian car would know what he means, and, yes, Russia’s biggest exports are mainly oil and gas, followed by minerals. But the point remains that overseas arms sales are a huge moneymaker for Russia’s economy.
Russia is, in fact, the world’s second-largest arms exporter after the United States. Over the past decade, Moscow has, on average, exported around $6.2 billion worth of arms, according to data put out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This translates into an approximately 25 percent share of the global arms trade.
…